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Have you forgotten that all spending bills must originate in the House? Where the the group that led the charge to kill the Supercollider was led by a Democrat with the following vote totals [latimes.com]:

You do know that it was the Congress... controlled by mostly non-Southern Democrats... that killed the Supercollider, right? With the full support of then-President Bill Clinton. Most Republicans tried to save it as a matter of national prestige.

Then, when called out, you provided a link that directly contradicted your original statement. Lets have a look what the article says:

On Clinton:

to halt construction of the world's largest atom-smasher against the wishes of President Clinton and a Senate-House conference committee.

On most Republicans trying to save it: From your own figures 115 to kill, 61 to save. Are you maths skills so fucking poor that you think ~35% is most?

"AMENDMENT PURPOSE:To reduce funds for General Science and Research Activities and terminate the Superconducting Super Collider program for the purposes of reducing the deficit in the Federal Budget. "

Don't tout Google if you can't even report what you find accurately.

Don't lie on the internet when google is a tab away, dumb fuck And the mod who voted parent up: you're exactly as dishonest, if not an outright sock puppet.

Despite the fact that the Bush recession turned into a boom, and he balanced the budget, and IMO was the best President I've seen in my lifetime (and I've lived through 11 of them) they hate him for the simple fact that he's a Democrat and they're amoral (despite the fact that Republicans pretend to be God-fearing Christians).

You don't just get to ignore the tragedy the Clinton presidency was. He fucking sold our nuke tech to China and killed your precious fucking hadron colider

Congress (more Rs than Ds, see numbers above from other commentors) killed the collider, and despite all the crying and hand-waving, what harm has come from selling nuke tech to China? OTOH he took the Bush deficit and balanced the budget, and turned the Bush recession into a boom. We had no war on his watch. The WTC was bombed and the bombers were brought to justice.

Tragedy? Bush II was a tragedy. Started with a balanced budget, a robust economy, and peace, and left office the only President to leave office with fewer American jobs than when he went in, crashed the economy (we almost went into a depression), ran up the biggest deficit the US had ever seen, and had us in two wars, one of them the longest in history. The nation was attacked under his watch a year after he was in office, and when he left eight years later Bin Laden was still living in luxury in Pakistan.

Clinton was a good President and Bush II was possibly the worst President in US history. THAT'S reality, son. Fucking deal with it.

It also has little or nothing to do with the ".com boom". That was nothing but a bunch of companies that tried to CAPITALIZE on the internet (not actually build and grow it), who had no viable business models. ".com boom" had more to do with companies behind websites, not much else.

I totally disagree. The dot-com boom of the mid-to-late 90s was not only companies capitalizing on the internet by making websites, it was other companies building and growing it for all the new customers that wanted to sign on.

It does? How does the US lead, when the LHC is in Switzerland? Looks to me like Europe is leading in the area of high-energy physics, not the US.

What I don't understand is why these Texas scientists are upset, and why they're still in Texas. If all the work is in Europe, why wouldn't they just move there? That's the way it is when you're a professional; you only have a limited amount of choice in where you get to live, because you have to move to where the work is for your chosen industry. For instance, if you're a petroleum engineer, you're probably not going to get to live in Hawaii, since there's no oil there (that I'm aware of off the top of my head). If you're a VLSI designer, you're not going to get to work in Maine, since there's no companies there doing that work. High-energy physics doesn't seem like a career with tons of places to work.

Of course it does. The LHC is just one facility in one fairly narrow field. It makes news because high energy physics is sexy.

Nobel Prizes are awarded to people working in the US at a far greater rate than any other country. Even with recent gains by the rest of the world the US still wins more Nobels than the rest of the world combined.

The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke. Don't let it cloud your judgement of the other areas.

The peace price ius awarded by a different process for different reasons. While the other prizes are awarded by the Swedish Nobel Institute for past achievements, the peace prize is awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee as much as an incentive as a recognition.

In addition, nominations are restricted to experts in the field and living Nobel laureates for most of the prizes, but for the peace price, it's also open for governments and assemblies.Yes, that's right, congressmen from any country are automatically allowed to nominate Nobel peace prize candidates, which is why nominees include such peace loving people as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and George W. Bush.

To avoid causing political furore, the peace prize is often given for humanitarian reasons, despite Nobel's will stating that it should be given for anti-war efforts and fraternity between nations. This is why people like Mother Theresa and Al Gore got it, despite not having done anything that qualifies by the mandate for the prize. The most controversial prizes were all given as incentive prizes (Kissinger/Tho, Peres/Rabin/Arafat, Obama), presumably in a hope that having received the prize, they would feel more morally obliged to act out promises of peace treaties and military withdrawals (which is specifically given as a qualification for the peace prize). Le Duc Tho was probably the only one who lived up to that, but he also declined the prize.

Nobel Prizes are awarded to people working in the US at a far greater rate than any other country. Even with recent gains by the rest of the world the US still wins more Nobels than the rest of the world combined.

Corrected for population gives another picture.Nobel prizes per million citizens:

I've excluded three countries, due to Sweden and Norway being subject to nationality bias, and Iceland not having enough people to be statistically significant with its single Nobel laureate.(Sweden: 3.16)(Iceland: 3.12)(Norway: 1.59)

Also, keep in mind that several of the Nobel laureates moved between the time of their ground-breaking work and the time of receiving the award. Several to the US, because up until recently, the US paid well, and some to the UK and Switzerland, because the US wouldn't let communists in. This inflates the numbers for USA, Great Britain and Switzerland somewhat, but the trend is still clear - the US doesn't produce Nobel laureates at a higher tempo than all other countries.

Get out of your ivory tower; science is a career, much like any other, and scientists need to eat, just like everyone else. Yeah, in the scope of human history, where it's discovered is meaningless, but for the careers of the scientists and the state of funding for their future endeavours, it makes a huge difference. Moreover, it just reinforces the fact that no matter how good or skilled a scientist you are, these days your ability to do science doesn't depend on your merit, but on the state of science funding by your government. It's a perfectly valid point to bring up.

I don't really agree with this. As I said in another post here, I don't understand why these scientists are still in Texas. They're not prevented from doing science by the US government (and its lack of funding); nothing is stopping them from applying for a job at CERN in Switzerland where all this great work is going on. So in fact, maybe merit really is a factor here, because if they're being turned down for these jobs, that shows they probably aren't as good as the people who do get to work there.

So in fact, maybe merit really is a factor here, because if they're being turned down for these jobs, that shows they probably aren't as good as the people who do get to work there.

Or perhaps because CERN exists on limited funding and cannot hire every scientist in the world - even if CERN managers love the idea. If a particular place of research is unusually productive... expect long lines at the gates.

The experiments on LHC are scheduled years ahead. You cannot just come there, flip a switch and run your own experiment. It will cost millions in electric energy alone. CERN can sustain only a certain number of teams - or else they will be just sitting there and waiting for their time with the machine.

Perhaps the scientists are employed by universities and have teaching jobs assigned to them. Then they cannot easily move without abandoning their students. (That would be legal but not very nice.)

Theoretical physicists do not need to be near an experiment. Plenty of physics is done on paper (or in computers.) For those scientists Texas is just as good a place as any other.

Congresses cut of funding destroyed physics programs across the country- although the collider was in Texas there were people working on detectors, software and other aspects of the project across the entire US.

The fact that it would have been discovered 10 years ago is more significant than the fact it would have been discovered in the US. Whatever benefit will be derived from the discovery would have been enjoyed for an extra 10 years.

But this article is really those scientists shoving the governments nose in their choices not to fund. "See all this publicity? Astounding discoveries on physics? This could have been about US instead of CERN, it could be us getting the attention, getting a reputation for cutting-edge physics, etc, etc". They're drawing attention to the consequences of letting someone else get there first. It's not showing hypothetical value, it's showing real value that got away.

To be blunt, there's no indication that the SSC would have done such science. It got canceled in the first place because it was deeply in trouble. Would things have looked better, if the LHC was making discoveries while the SSC, supposedly operational for a couple of decades, was unable to replicate the experiments due to the shoddy nature of its construction and management?

Second, we got a lot of value out of canceling that project and putting the money elsewhere, including the LHC.

It will be a cold day in hell when the people of the US realize that those elected to congress actually need to KNOW their shit, rather than just talk it... Meaning that EVERYONE elected needs to prove they know what in the hell they are doing, technical and otherwise, rather just knowing how to talk the talking points...

Next you'll tell me funding bridges, roads, tunnels, railroad, etc. is good for the country

These are just feel goid schemes to funnel money away from rich folk and corporations, preventing them from creating jobsand growing a giant government that stifles growth

Nothing useful or capital creating will come out of this, just some socialist European egg heads making up theories without proof that destroys young people's faith in God...welcome to America. Weep for us.

Every time I see someone post something like this I fear for the confirmation bias that causes others to read it as though it was in no way intended to be sarcastic.

See, I could even have my own confirmation bias going on here. This can legitimately be taken as you genuinely believe the bullshit that I see as obvious sarcasm due to the last sentence, but it wouldn't be that clear to someone else. Especially fox news viewers. Of whom we have more than a few around here. That station is like a fucking plague on the intelligence of the US.

Science is not a zero-sum game. Scientific discoveries enrich everybody, regardless of which country they're made in.

The SSC was way over budget. Better to pull the plug than to give various contractors a blank check.

American physicists are well represented at the LHC. Grad students are still being trained, etc. It's not like American experimental particle physics was dealt a fatal blow from which it can never recover by the cancellation of the SSC.

The actual fatal blow to accelerator-based experimental particle physics may be a world-wide one, due to (1) accelerator technology reaching the point of diminishing returns, and (2) a physics scenario in which the Higgs is detected but absolutely nothing else (such as supersymmetry) turns up. If this is how things turn out, then we'll just have to say that accelerator physics was a field that was active and then died. It happens. There's no god-given rule that says that every academic field will remain viable forever. Take a look at the Nobel prizes in physics [wikipedia.org] from years like 1912 and 1920. The future of experimental particle physics may be in cosmic ray experiments, for example. If so, then the US Congress will look prescient for canceling the SSC.

Science is not a zero-sum game. Scientific discoveries enrich everybody, regardless of which country they're made in.

Yep, but scientific advances in a country act as an indicator of the technological and scientific standing of the nation at large (which more often than not are are advanced by the investments in those scientific advancements).

Think of the Apollo Space Program. Sure, it embiggened mankind, but the materials and computer competence required to build those rockets stayed in the US, and was just another government-funded cornerstone of the tech that made the US dominate the world economy to an extent that it's

You are incorrect. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally [educationworld.net] at the end of World War 2. The terms demanded by the allied powers were laid out in the Potsdam Declaration and require an unconditional surrender. These terms were initially rejected by the Japanese. After the bombings, the Japanese agreed to them and surrendered unconditionally.

The emperor [wikipedia.org] was removed from power, as the terms required, but continues in a purely ceremonial role.

Is what the headlines should read. The reason why SSC was not completed is because Poppa Bush had chosen it based on POLITICAL reasons. Had the reason been up to scientists, then this would have been built in illinois by extending our original collider AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FINISHED.
The reason that I say so that:
1) it extended the current collider. As such, only part of it had to be built.
2) the ground was soft in Illinois and did not suffer from water issues like Texas did. Just building part of the tunnel in Texas was more expensive then doing all of it in Illinois.
3) Illinois was loaded with diggers and plenty of workers that were finishing up various projects in Chicago. They would have brought the diggers down there and finished it in no time flat. In texas, they brought in loads of illegals who had to be taught how to do simple construction techniques.

What Americans should be doing is screaming that we have suffered ENOUGH of the politics that permeates today. For example, the neo-cons (these are the ppl that have taken over the republican party and are the ones responsible for the above screw-up), are currently pushing for the Space Launch System to be built (ANOTHER 20 B to build a system that will not have its first SCHEDULED launch for another decade) and working hard to kill off private space. They are basically trying to destroy NASA and America's space assests. What is amazing is that they proclaim one thing, but do another. And their loyal followers have not notice that over the last 30 years, they have sunk America into being a mediocre nation with massive debt and destroying our science and R&D.

First off, I hate to tell you, but it is the neo-cons that are pushing for the FAA to regulate, as well as pushing hard for NASA to control the private space via the standard cost+ approach, rather than as a service. They KNOW that a service will succeed, where the cost+ encourages abuse

Secondly the grip about regulations is nothing but a red herring. Look at Japan, Canada and Germany. All have many many more regs than we do. And all have stronger economies than we do. Why? Well, all are nationalistic and

They don't actually have any such thing. They have a particle that is necessary for the theories to be correct, but they don't know if the behavior of the particle follows the theories so there is a lot of excitement and potential for new ideas to be generated from the study of this.

As far as practical uses, well few thought General Relativity would have practical application, and now it's use is a common everyday thing because GPS depends on it.

Who can tell what uses will be made from this when the theory isn't even settled yet?

>I mean, it's all well and good to know that it exists, but what can we actually *DO* with that knowledge?

People who say stuff like this typically imply such knowledge is useless.

Basic scientific research never has immediate here-and-now effects. They may even be 100 years off in the future. Do you honestly think that Maxwell thought we'd be communicating over large distances because of his equations wirelessly as easily as we do?

He unified electromagnetic theory in 1865. It took until the 1920s for b

There are people out there who are pooh-poohing the Higgs Boson. "What can we do with it?" they ask, implying that we can't ever do anything with basic science almost sneeringly because they can't wrap their own tiny minds around why we do basic scientific research. They can't figure out why we try to discover why the Universe is the way it is.

James Clerk Maxwell unified electromagnetic theory in the 1860s. This was the basis for all modern electronics and radio, and had implications for special and general relativity. There were absolutely *zero* practical implications at the time. It took people a while to figure out what to do with his equations.

It wasn't until the 1920s that broadcast radio started to become common. This was a gap of 80 years, more or less. That does not even include the implications for the nuclear science and MRI and such. We are still using his equations and the math of those who followed, like Einstein, Szilard, Bose, Feynman, et alia, as the basis of new technology more than 140 years later. We probably won't figure out the full implications of the Higgs Boson in the next 200 years. So what if there are no immediate applications for the Higgs? Discovering how the universe works helped the "primitive" hunter-gatherer track his lunch, and it has helped modern man in more ways than can be described here.

But that's not enough for certain people. These are the people who decry the study of fruit fly genetics as a waste of time and money because they can't possibly ask someone why we do such research. They are politicians, wannabe politicians, media dunderheads, demagogues, and people who don't see advancement of basic science as the self-centered advancement of themselves. They are the Sarah Palins of the world. They are the ones who, if actually listened to, would put a halt to all basic science because, to them, it is "useless."

Because they think their 8'th grade (if that) misunderstanding of science and technology trumps that of people actually doing the hard work of basic science.

The Tevatron in Illinois is capable of reaching 1 tera volts or 8 times as much energy the LHC needed to produce the Higgs.

Seems to me the LHC found it because they were able to pull the signal out of the background which was more a data analysis feat than a "let's smash protons together even harder than we have before" feat.

They are saying that their experimental results fit the predictions of the Standard Model Higgs boson, to a relatively high confidence level. This is the best that you can hope for from any scientific experiment.

Do subatomic particles exist in the same way that atoms or a grain of sand exist? What if the Higgs and other subatomic particles exist only as the product of the LHC and other particle smashers.

Or put it this way: Imagine I have created, in my disgust at Apple's patent practices, the Gimongous Apple Smasher. (Apple fans can use my other invention, the Android+ Smasher.)
Because of the way it's constructed, whenever I use the iSmasher, I wind up with five pieces of broken glass. Am I justified then in procl

Uhm, you seem to be on a rather circuitous route towards what quantum physics is all about -- or at least field theories.
To take an example, a large atomic nucleus doesn't have a bunch of distinct electrons whizzing about it, it has a bunch of electron-ness in its general vicinity.
The electron-ness can only be poked/prodded removed and replaced in set amounts. Electron-ness consists of energy, charge, spin and a few other things. These quantities must always be added and removed in specific ratios if you're adding or removing electron-ness. You must remove charge in chunks of 1 electron/proton charge, angular momentum in a fundamental unit of spin (plus a bit if your whole system is spinning), energy in electron masses plus a bit if your whole system is at a different potential, and so on.
But when the electron-ness is all together, there's no way we know of to distinguish the different bits, and it's even provable that they share certain pieces of information.
So to go back to your glass analogy, it's as if we discover that we can break an iphone screen into five chunks of glass, and _everything_ glass is made of some integer multiple of chunks that mass. When you have a whole piece of glass, it looks like that -- an unbroken whole, but you can only break bits of a certain mass off no matter what you try (the concept of size is a bit more finnicky). Also if you hit one part of the screen really hard and listen to the echo it'll sound like that portion of the screen was an individual chunk, much smaller than one fifth of the screen for a moment, but if you wait a little while and poke it gently it looks like one unbroken whole again.

Not strictly true, but not wrong either. Like all science, its a positivist model which we test against the data. It turns out you can fairly accurately simulate atomic nuclei as consisting of protons and neutrons trapped inside a potential well. Are they actually protons and neutrons in that state, or do they just behave that way under certain types of probing?

It really doesn't matter - in so far as long as prediction continues to match experiment.

The projected cost did spiral from 4.4 billion in 1987 to 12 billion in 1993 (source [wikipedia.org]). I think rather than not liking Texas, it was a matter of congress at one time being concerned with billions of dollars. Granted, they never would have batted an eye had this been a military expenditure even then, but the costs were significant too.

Neither you nor the parent remember any history at all. The only reason that the SSC was sited in the DFW area is because Jim Wright [wikipedia.org] (the Representative from DFW) just happened to be the Speaker of the House at the time. Everybody else on the planet wanted to site it at Fermilab, and use the existing equipment in situ, rather than starting from scratch. So, once again, politics trumped engineering.

I'm obviously a layman and my opinion on these matters isn't worth much. But I am a fair judge of human nature, human bureaucracy, and I do understand how important this issue is to the physicists.

I think we can make some very good predictions about you from that statement. Like, there may be some other reason that you don't want to see any confirmation of the existence of the Higgs Boson. In fact, from your seemingly neutral statement above, I can make a prediction about your political views and affiliations with a great deal of confidence. I can predict with a very high level of confidence your educational level.

You are what happens after a decades-long attack on science - actually a decades-long attack on all forms of expertise. Because once people are convinced that scientists are all liars with agendas and all experts are eggheads that you can't trust, then you can fill people's heads with all sorts of BS, because now their only reference for reality is what you tell them. It's how outlets like Fox News work. "Oh those scientists don't know anything and they're all lying" and, "Oh those professors don't know anything because they're all lying" and, "Oh, you know those Nobel Prizes don't mean anything because...Al Gore is fat." etc.

I'm obviously a layman and my opinion on these matters isn't worth much

And yet, here you are telling us how you are "a fair judge of human nature" and how you "do understand how important this issue is to the physicists". I would predict, with a high level of confidence, that you are neither "a fair judge of human nature" nor do you understand what part of this issue is important to physicists.

It would be deeply embarrassing if after all this they make a break through.

Wait, what?

So... I'm skeptical.

No, you're not. If you were skeptical, you wouldn't have already made up your mind. It's OK to question what you hear, what you read, but only if you question to the same extent your own biases - your own limitations. And questioning your self is not, "I may not be an expert, but dad-gummit, I know what I know...".

That is not the gist of what you said in the comment PopeRatzo was replying to. You implied flawed methodology and even the possibility of a conspiracy. That is neither patient nor intellectually valid.

"I grew up in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood and was an altar boy (thus, my smart-ass friends called me "pope" because I was such a goody goody and wore a dress in church with the priests. The joke back then was "What kind of sex do priests have? Nun." Of course, that was before we knew that so many priests were serial child rapists and that the church leaders all the way up to the Vatican and including the current Pope Benedict were complicit in protecting those rapist-priests.)"

PopeRatzo probably has you nailed down quite well, there. If a little harshly put.Your information on this is, quite frankly, bullshit. I am familiar with the workings of the ATLAS experiment, and have been present at numerous private lectures given by them giving updates on their data and possible conclusions.Indeed, far from being the last possibility on the list, the figure of 125.3GeV is basically exactly what the standard model predicted. In fact, the result is so predictable it is almost boring. You say that physicist would be deeply embarased if they didn't find it, but actually many were hoping to find a less expected result than this. So far, the results have not helped us at all with understanding dark energy (though, it is early days, still) as many had hoped. Supersymmetry is looking less likely.It is OK to be sceptical, but you seem to be basing your comments on nothing more than an uneducated hunch.

Estimating the mass and energy of particles is a very established science- I would be very surprised if all of the detectors aren't calibrated in real-time against well known particles identified in the same event.

The Standard Model doesn't "put" the Higgs anywhere because the Higgs mass is an input parameter to the theory. And all the theorists I talk to about this sort of thing would love to know how you've concluded that SUSY is confirmed, since they're lamenting the absence of anything that would fit or require supersymmetry, at the same time current results rule out a larger and larger fraction of possible theories/parameters for Susy models.

Do you have any idea of what an "experiment" is? They made a prediction. They ran the experiment. The experiment met their prediction. Previous experiments did not. The experiment they ran isn't that new in terms of methodology. They've run variations of it over the last several decades: Small atoms together; see what is created. What is new is better detectors/detector methods/computers so that they can sift through the massive truckloads of data that is recorded in a miniscule of a second.

If I told you to just trust me because I'm really sure you wouldn't take that as a fact would you.

No one asked them to trust them. They gave their preliminary results. Nerds everywhere cheered. They will release more details later.

I'm not being unreasonable here. I just think it's a bad idea to jump to any conclusions until people have had more time to go over the data.

You are being rather unreasonable in how you express things.

The level of certainty is THEIR estimation of certainty. If you're wrong but think you're right then you're going to say you are very certain. If you made a mistake but didn't realize it then that isn't going to factor into your calculations.

If you can find a mistake in their calculations, go right ahead. I suspect that you can't so why are you even attempting to say they made a mistake.

If they're saying to just trust them, why did I sit through a two hour conference talk last night where leaders from two different experiments explained exactly what their procedures for running, calibrating and analyzing data from the LHC in half a dozen channels each were, including multiple tests against other known values/constants?

The council of concern trolls seem to be really, very, seriously, awfully concerned about the Higgs discovery...

I've been following this and it sounded like they were going through a very long check list of possibilities. Trying one thing after another. And this whole thing about "we're getting close" was mostly that they were getting close to the end of the list of possibilities.

Not really, the standard model predicted what was found. however "finding it" involves using statistical analysis on an enormous number of individual experiments. Think of it like a very long time exposure of an extremely faint astronomical object, the longer the exposure the better the clarity of what you have "found". If you have two independent "time exposures" you can combine them for even greater clarity, which is basically what has been done here, two different experiments using different technology and techniques have come up with the same "picture" predicted by the standard model.

It would be deeply embarrassing if after all this they make a break through.

If that's what you think then you really need to listen to some actual scientists talking about their work, and there's no better starting point than a youtube search for Feynman interviews, but don't stop there have a listen to Sagan, EO Wilson, and the rest, even Alan Alda is worth listening to, not for his views on the higgs but for the way he approaches scientists in his interviews.
You will discern a side of human nature in these people, but it's a side that is rarely seen in the political/corporate world, ( the best name I can come up with is "self-skepticisim"). You see, no matter who predicted what, all physicists have "won" because the Higgs has moved from "best theory" to "scientific fact" but it will never reach a point of absolute certainty because physicists will never stop thinking of new ways to test their models.

I'm obviously a layman and my opinion on these matters isn't worth much.

The value of your opinion is not limited by your layman status, it's limited by your lack of undersatnding of how to judge the strength of the scientific evidence.

They have a Sigma 5 confidence level which is equivalent to one chance in a million that they're mistaken.

The way that I understand it, is that they have Sigma 5 confidence level that they found a new boson type particle.
And that they have sigma 4.9 confidence level that it is the boson responsible for the Higgs field i.e. the Higgs Boson

You realise it is not possible to be peer reviewed in the conventional sense? The peers would require a new LHC. As it is, we have just about the best peer review process already: two experiments working separately, on different data, different methodology, with the same accelerator and they have both produced the same result.

"You realise it is not possible to be peer reviewed in the conventional sense? The peers would require a new LHC."

Not even close. Peer reviewers do not have to duplicate the experiments, they just have to verify that the analysis methodologies are correct, given that the data is accurate as presented.

Peer reviewers have no practical way to determine if the data is in fact correct, unless they see obvious flaws in the procedures. Therefore verifying the accuracy of the data is not a normal part of peer review. Their job is to catch blunders in the procedures as stated in the paper, and the analyses as stated in the paper.

However, finding flaws in the experimental or analytical procedures is very much the job of the reviewers. This has been the big stumbling block for "climate science": the researchers used -- and have continued to use -- highly questionable methods. Even if their DATA is all correct (which I very much doubt).

"Who the hell knows. Given the fact that you can't get your hands on the original datasets without the right secret handshake or whatever it is that climate scientists use to identify each other they could be doing just about anything,"

By the way, remember the Berkeley statistician who was a skeptic about global warming and the methodologies by the climatologists? He got their raw data and processed it in what he believed was the right way. The answer came out the same as the mainstream climate community said. They aren't lying, or faking.

I'll listen to the hundreds of Ph.D's that have been dealing with this day in and day out, and knew beforehand to make sure they had a high confidence level before releasing the info. They had this stuff over 6 months ago, maybe longer; and vetted it, making sure it was sigma 5 before letting it loose. They did that because there are ass hats like yourself even in their own community. The fact that Stephen Hawking(a much greater mind than you) was confident enough in the results to say he lost a hundred dollars on betting they wouldn't find it, says a lot. So really, I'll take their word for it, since your "confidence level" means fuck-all.

As others have pointed out, they have this very accurately as what was predicted. There's not a whole lot more to do to prove it is what they think it is, shy of building another giant supercolider looking for something else, and having it give the same result.

This is significantly different from the 'neutrinos are faster than light' problem, where neutrino's being faster than light didn't fit with any existing theory, and it didn't really seem to make sense as a physical result and was far more likely something else (which is also in many ways the reason they published a paper saying 'anyone have ideas cause something seems seriously wrong here'). In this case they have a particle predicted by theory, that, within the bounds of how good any physical experiment ever can be*, seems like they've found where they expected.

*physics theory is usually very much a single effect sort of thing. They predict a single particle with a particular speed/mass etc. Unfortunately physical experiment is never that good. There's always some inherent detector error, certain inherent randomness in systems, some other very minor effects that normally can be discounted but still do something to your results. The unfortunate part here is that the theory seems to so accurately predict the result that we don't have any clues to anything else that might be going on to chase after. If the result had been close, but not quite what was predicted that would have led the way to even more interesting science. As it is physicists now have to start poking at the problem to figure out if there's anywhere the theory does fall apart.

Forgive me thinking it's premature to jump to conclusions until the information has been vetted by a larger group of scientists

how much larger a group are you looking for beyond all of the high energy particle physicists in the EU and the US?

You mean like how they waited 6 months since http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1334.short? (title First Solid Signs of the Higgs Boson Could Be Announced Next Week).

They've been looking for stuff at the LHC since dec of 2009, and the whole point of the damn thing was to find the higgs boson. And they have been *very* tentative with every piece of data they've talked about since then.

Possibly the clock won't start until they formally publish. It doesn't start until the wider scientific community gets a good look at the data

uh...

Not sure where to start with this. Other than the fact that we had presentation here, where I am (and I'm a computer scientist in canada) with raw data from the LHC back in January. Anyone who wants the data can get it if you are part of a collaborating institution. Which at this point is basically all the institutions that have high energy particle physicists.

There literally is no wider scientific community at this point except maybe china (and frankly, enough of their scientists are in US and European institutions it would be unrealistic to think they don't has the same information as anyone else). I don't know what 'broader scientific community' you think exists, but between Fermi Lab and the CERN you have basically all of the high energy particle physics researchers in the world. I used to be an optics guy, that's a much bigger field with a lot more people in the private sector, but there's no secret high energy particle accelerator in Japan that they'll just pull out of the air to verify this experiment. Fermi Lab and CERN are it, and they're in agreement with a reproduced result. that's why this is all over the news.

You don't even know what the fuck you're talking about when you say "wider group"

CERN is an international effort, with hundreds of scientists working together. It's a pretty wide group in itself.

You are, in fact, disparaging the entire effort because you deliberately refuse to educate yourself and insist on arguing from ignorance. You are basically saying that they are wasting everyone's time because you can't be arsed to go and read what's been written by hundreds of people around the globe about this.

in 1993, Clinton tried to prevent the cancellation by asking Congress to continue "to support this important and challenging effort" through completion because "abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science"

I realize that you're just a bigot who wants to make a kneejerk comment about Texas, so this comment is probably a waste of my time.

However, a couple of points: Texas actually does have some decent research institutions (The UT System, A&M, and Rice all have excellent science departments).

Secondly, the SSC would have attracted the best and brightest from all over the nation.

Our K-12 system does have some issues, especially with the dolts who approve textbooks in Austin. However, we do have a lot of smart kids and good school systems in some places that have produced some of the nation's top talent in the sciences.

I don't have a problem with atheism, especially since I am one myself. However, mindless bigotry and gross generalizations puts you in some of the same moral categories as the Christians go as far as being pragmatic about solving the world's problems. You're not pragmatic; you just want to whine and moan with your air of superiority.

You subsidized it with higher levels of unemployment in the many technical fields needed to design, construct, and use the SSC.

You subsidized it with lower salaries in those fields, for those able to find work in them.

You subsidized it with the loss of the many small companies that otherwise would have been started by entrepreneurs in response to the challenges faced by the SSC project. Most would have failed, of course, but in a project of that size it's likely that a handful of these small companies would have survived to make significant advances in the state of the art.

You subsidized it with a US industrial base that was less competitive than its foreign competition, which honed its capabilities solving the difficult technical problems presented by the LHC, while the US base did not.

You subsidized it with a loss in stature of the US physics community on the world stage. Having the top-tier experimental apparatus outside the US is not the way to attract "the best and the brightest" to the US and is, in fact, the way to force the best young researchers in the US to go overseas.

You subsidized it with a loss in stature of hard science in the minds of US school children. Like the space program before it, the SSC could have been the motivation for a generation of school children to study science and technology. Lacking this symbol, clever students who might have made significant contributions in many technical fields have instead drifted off to other things.

The per-capita cost to build the SSC, in round numbers, was $40 in 1993. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to pay $40 then, than the above subsidies now?